On Monday 22 October, an Italian court found seven men guilty of manslaughter for their role in failing to adequately communicate the risk of a possible earthquake.
The earthquake struck on 6 April 2009 and killed more than 300 people in the Italian city of L'Aquila.
The experts had been consulted in March that year about the possibility of a major quake after tremors, and the prosecution case hinged on the fact that they had given out "inexact, incomplete and contradictory" information after this meeting.
The question is: was this trial about science or communication? While the media are filled with stories about science being on trial, claiming that the scientists have been convicted of failing to predict the earthquake, New Scientist points out that the conviction was actually for errors in communication.
This report from Nature also suggests that miscommunication of the March scientific discussion lies at the heart of the matter. Nevertheless, the popular perception of the story has been that science is on trial. It is certainly the scientists who are bearing the brunt of the punishment. Their six-year jail terms are longer even than the four-year sentences the prosecution had requested.
In the 17th century, Galileo faced his own trial. It is popularly believed that he was convicted because of his practice of astronomy. In fact, he was tried because of the way he communicated his astronomy. It is a subtle but important difference.
The Vatican was not opposed to astronomy but it was against the unauthorised communication of anything that would require a change in the way the Bible was interpreted. Moving the Earth from the centre of the solar system required a massive rethink of certain biblical passages and so should have been submitted to the Vatican for assessment. Galileo did not do that.
As Carl Sagan once said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". In 17th century Italy, claiming the Earth moved was extraordinary. The trouble for Galileo was that he did not possess the required extraordinary evidence. His belief that the tides were created by inertia as Earth moved through space failed even a cursory analysis.
Even though history has proved his heliocentric view correct, when challenged at the time, he didn't have a leg to stand on. He had asserted too much, and conviction was a foregone conclusion. In L'Aquila, the opposite appears to have been the case. The prosecution thought that the scientists revealed too little of what they knew. In both cases, the result was disastrous.
In 1633, the punitive treatment of Galileo eviscerated the practice of astronomy in Italy for centuries. He was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life and although the conviction was for miscommunication, astronomy itself became toxic. Even the staunchly Catholic Society of Jesus moved its astronomical efforts to the far east to stay out of the Vatican's gaze.
Today, it is very hard to see how the conviction of these geologists will do anything to improve the sciences in Italy. Certainly, lessons in the communication of earthquake risk must be learned from this tragedy, but who will dare to speak up now with this outcome as precedent? Who will want to study earthquakes in Italy?
This verdict cannot bring back the hundreds lost in L'Aquila. It can only doom more to die as Italian scientists turn their back on the study of earthquakes.